19
Bernadette
“Was this the view you looked at every day when you were growing up?” Matt asks me, once my mom finally leaves us alone in my room.
“Yes.”
“You really captured it.”
“Thanks. Obviously, it looks very different in the winter.”
He chuckles. “Well, yeah.”
Having Matt McGovern in my childhood bedroom is totally surreal, but he seems to feel quite at home here.
I pick Daisy up so she can look out the window too, but all I can think about is my dad.
“You don’t have to entertain us,” Matt says. “Go be with your dad.”
Stop reading my mind!
He takes Daisy from me. “We’ll go for a walk or something.”
“Yeah, take her out to the pasture so she can run around. The bathroom across the hall is for us. My parents have their own. And I don’t know where their resident artist is staying, but probably downstairs.”
“Resident artist?”
“Yeah, they always have at least one Artist in Residence who’s supposed to help out with chores, in exchange for room and board. This guy sounds like a massive tool. Anyway—you guys get settled. I’ll go hang out with my dad for a bit. Dinner here is usually pretty early.”
“Cool,” he says, putting Daisy down. “We’ll be around.”
I suddenly grab him and hug him tight. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
He strokes my hair and kisses the top of my head. “Where else would I be?”
I swallow hard. The tip of my nose tingles. Damn him. Why’s he gotta be so damn perfect?
My dad is lying on one of the deep cozy sofas with his head propped up on several pillows, while I sit on a leather pouf next to him. At fifty-seven, he’s still a striking and fit man, perfectly capable of handling the day-to-day running of a small subsistence farm with my mom—on top of teaching art to locals and painting for himself and hosting a summer art camp for kids. But he started complaining about aching joints and a sore back and neck a while ago. The complaining has since stopped as his recreational use of marijuana has started up again—for medical purposes. It’s not like my parents are potheads—not at all. But they’ve been casual users off and on for as long as I can remember, especially when they’re hosting other artists. Needless to say, it hasn’t exactly improved their organizational skills.
I pick my dad’s eyeglasses up from the side table and clean them with my T-shirt. He always looks older and more vulnerable to me when he’s not wearing glasses, for some reason. “Are you in pain right now?”
He smiles. “I’m fine, pumpkin. Honest. I mean, it’s a dull pain. They gave me an extra-strength Tylenol at the hospital. Fortunately, I didn’t mess up my dominant hand.”
“Yeah, but you can’t do most of the things that you have to do around the farm with one hand!”
“Yeah well. We won’t be able to do the farmer’s market for a while. Unless we hire someone to help out.”
“What about your resident artist? That’s the kind of thing he’s supposed to help you with.”
“We’ll see. His stay here is almost up, actually. We’ve got a poet coming in next.”
“Well, I hope he knows his way around a hoe.”
“Actually, she’s in her seventies.”
“Dad! You’re supposed to choose people who can help out around here!”
“Her poetry is beautiful and she’s recently widowed. She needs a change of scenery.”
